A flurry of guild creation and shop opening posts flooded the forum pages.

Even before the plaza opened, numerous underground societies had sprung up,

such as Amalgam, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Brotherhood of Steel, the Far East Magic Napping Society of Summer, the DD Simp Official Support Group, and so on, recruiting like-minded individuals on the forum for a long time. Most were just for fun and jokes, rather than serious operations.

Clicking on their posts,

one would find that the number of threads discussing anime, single-player games, mobile games, and vtubers far exceeded those exploring strategies for the Killing Game.

However, now that the guild function had been enabled, some of these unserious underground societies had actually become legitimate,

formally posting their guild emblems, badges, uniform styles, and membership benefits on the forum,

marking their guild headquarters in the plaza and the contact information of the person in charge,

looking quite official.

Well, it was understandable.

Building a small guild didn't cost much; a guild with fewer than 10 members could be established for only 4,000 game coins.

The potential benefits were considerable—10 players were 10 humanoid, upright-walking weapons of mass destruction, and their bargaining power with large organizations increased dramatically, no longer being fish at their mercy.

Just as enthusiastically as guilds, shops were also being built.

One thing that had always troubled solo players

was that the good items in the game store were too expensive,

and trading with other players required contact in the real world,

and if they encountered a bounty hunter's fishing trap,

the consequences would be dire.

Now, with the game plaza, players could finally achieve safe transactions—the mall had a public welfare trading hall,

where players could ensure fair and reasonable transactions by signing contracts in advance.

Similarly, various shops opened by players (selling goods, providing food services, etc.) could also ensure safe and fair services by signing contracts in advance—

the animal-headed guardian NPCs in the plaza had built-in market supervision functions. If they found operators violating regulations, or customers deliberately causing trouble,

they would instantly teleport to the shop, draw a giant sword as large as a door panel from behind,

and smash the players who violated market regulations and disrupted market order into the wall with a single blow.

The injury was maintained at the level of "not dying, but being extremely painful, and completely losing combat power for a period of time."

With one move, you could tell they were an old torment king.

In this way, the safety and fairness of the services provided by shops were also guaranteed,

and almost overnight, all kinds of shops, large and small, sprang up in the plaza.

However, this did not mean that the black market in the real world would be directly replaced—after all, only a few players could go to the game plaza,

and there were many things that were inconvenient to handle in the plaza that had to be done in the real-world black market.

Li Ang browsed the forum, closed the webpage,

picked up his phone and glanced at the WeChat red envelope sent by his landlady in the middle of the night, and the sentence below the red envelope, "Had a great time tonight, [Rose]."

After hesitating for a moment, he didn't dare to open it, threw the phone under the pillow, and pretended to be asleep.

————

A few days later, in the early morning, it was raining outside the window.

Li Ang woke up from the bed and saw a white-clothed, long-haired figure lying prone at the foot of the bed.

The figure was on all fours, lying on the ground like a cockroach, its limbs twisted into bizarre angles, its face completely covered by black hair, revealing only a pale nose,

looking extremely creepy.

"Giggle..."

The white-clothed figure made a strange sound from its throat,

its fingers and toes tapping flexibly on the ground, making a rustling, rainy sound—looking outside the window again, the sky was clear for thousands of miles.

Wearing pajamas, Li Ang calmly rubbed his eyes, got out of bed, put on his slippers, and went to the bathroom to wash his face and brush his teeth. While spitting out the mouthwash, he said to the white-clothed figure through the mirror, "Aren't you tired of posing like this so early in the morning?"

The white-clothed figure was silent for a moment before making a sound, "Tch."

She stood up from the ground and tossed her hair casually. It was none other than Chai Chai, who was cosplaying as Kayako out of boredom.

"I'm so bored, Li Ang."

Chai Chai rotated her head 720 degrees and said, "When are you going to take me out for a walk? I'm stuck at home every day, and I'm tired of playing games."

"What's there to walk around for? Don't you know these days are holidays, and there are a lot of people outside?"

Li Ang brushed his teeth and said vaguely, "We can only go out to play in a day or two when there are no people in the scenic spots.

Besides, the Special Affairs Bureau is maintaining治安 (zhì ān, public order) very well now, and it's difficult to encounter abnormal events. There's no need to go out.

If you're really bored, why don't you do experiments with me?"

"Pfft~"

Chai Chai crossed her arms in front of her chest, rolled her eyes, stuck out her tongue, and refused decisively, "No way."

The experiments Li Ang was talking about basically involved soaking in pet breeding boxes and playing games with bugs and plants.

Pinching bugs, dissecting bugs, modifying bugs, hatching bugs, reviving dead bugs with the dead object resurrection technique, planting trees, planting flowers, using alchemy to make tricycles, motorcycles, bumper cars, grenade launchers...

It's boring to watch for a long time, and it's easy to get the smell of insect pheromones all over your body.

Knock knock knock.

There was a knock on the door. Chai Chai quickly picked up her phone, glanced at it, and said to Li Ang in a mysterious and suppressed voice, "The thing I ordered online has arrived. Go and get it for me."

"What kind of weird thing did you order online again?"

Li Ang went to open the door with a question mark on his face and took a huge cardboard box from the delivery guy.

"What is it?"

Li Ang dragged the cardboard box into the room, closed the door, and Miss Chai immediately floated out, excitedly extending her sharp nails to easily cut open the cardboard box seal,

and took out... a large dog house?

That's right, square, with a cool waterproof material on the outside and fluffy and soft on the inside, perfect for pets to lie on.

Li Ang looked confused, but saw Miss Chai jump up excitedly and fall heavily into the dog house, which had not yet been completely torn from the packaging plastic bag. After adjusting her lying position,

she raised her head and said to Li Ang triumphantly, "How is it? Is it suitable?"

"Suitable my ass?"

Li Ang stared and asked, "What did you buy a dog house for?"

"To lie down, of course."

Chai Chai said as a matter of course, "Summer is here, and I always feel hot lying on the sofa. The beanbag chairs on the market are also hot, so it's better to buy a large dog house. It's cheap, cool, and the size is just right.

How about it, am I very virtuous and homely?"

As she said this, Chai Chai waved her hands and feet randomly to make her lying position as comfortable as possible, looking like a good-for-nothing couch potato.

"Hmph, hahaha, it's as comfortable as I thought. I'm such a genius."

Lying in the dog house, Chai Chai added drama to herself with a rich expression, "The God of War returns and finds his five-year-old daughter living in a dog house, eating leftovers every day. In a rage, he summons 100,000 live-in sons-in-law who are working as security guards, but each son-in-law gives him a knife, 'It's all your fault for causing so much trouble every day!'"

"...Whatever makes you happy."

Li Ang sighed, took out the vibrating phone and glanced at it, and threw it to Chai Chai, "The landlady has sent another game invitation. You play games with her today."

"Ah?"

Chai Chai's face instantly collapsed. She wriggled her body like a maggot and said unwillingly, "I wanted to watch anime today..."

Ever since Chai Chai messed around and flirted with the wrong person using Li Ang's voice that day, the landlady, a wealthy woman of thirty-nine years old who owned multiple buildings in Yin City, often asked him to play games,

and would send red envelopes after playing.

Since the landlady had been very kind to Li Ang before, renting this house to him at a low price when he had just left the orphanage, and had not raised the price for several years, and would even bring some fruit during festivals,

Li Ang didn't want to use brainwashing skills like mental control on her,

so he simply let the culprit Chai Chai play games with her.

The benefits... are that Li Ang now has his rent halved and all utilities waived...

Go for it, Chai Chai. I believe in you.

Thinking of this, Li Ang smiled. Ignoring Chai Chai, who was rolling around in the dog house, wailing and screaming,

he changed his clothes, said, "I'm going to the plaza," and disappeared.

After waiting and settling down for the past few days, many shops have opened in the game plaza. It's time to go and do some market research and open my own shop.